This was supposed to be a quality Air Force team that would make us disregard last year’s 5-6 edition.
It looked good from the start. Air Force won at Washington and then at home against San Diego State, averaging over 30 points scored.
But then a loss by a point to Wyoming and a defeat by three points against Utah set ablaze a hideous spiral of four consecutive losses. The last of it was another 3-point loss at nemesis Navy. A victory over UNLV followed. Then the bottom fell out.
TCU ripped the Falcons 48-10 at their own yard Saturday.
The walls caved and the roof sank, too, because Air Force coach Fisher DeBerry likely realized that his team is headed for its second straight losing season, the first time that has happened in his 22 seasons as Falcons head coach. He began wagging his tongue like many 3-5 coaches wag their tongues when misery creeps.
Only with an unfortunate and ignorant twist: That TCU bunch, DeBerry said, sure has a lot more “Afro-American” players than the Falcons and “it just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well.”
Hey, Fisher, quick lesson: It is Afr-i-can-American. An Afro is how your hair will look by season’s end from distraught and furious yanking. He has been trying to clean it up and Wednesday held a news conference where I think I heard him apologize.
Yes, in the statement he read he said he never meant to hurt anyone and “I have made a mistake and ask for everyone’s forgiveness.”
But that is the thing with a 67-year-old coach who has been doing things a certain way for 22 years in one place and whose pride is paramount. Once he starts yacking without the script, confusion follows.
I heard a lot of “maybe I” should have done this or that and “I probably” did stereotype in his question-answer session. Maybe? Probably? Why start backtracking in the middle of a news conference called to confirm your mistakes?
Because DeBerry, like a lot of people, does not really believe he did anything wrong.
Sure he did.
He is the head coach of the United States Air Force Academy. Sometimes around here we drop the “United States” from the school’s name. This is an institution that is required to represent the highest standards of our country. There should be no room for this foolishness.
I understand a high superior reprimanded him for his comments. I do not think when that official was dispensing it he used “maybe” and “probably.”
Really, the biggest indictment of DeBerry is that it took him until the TCU blowout to understand that he does not have a football team that has enough diversity, particularly African-Americans.
He used to roll through the old, weak Western Athletic Conference and to his credit led Air Force to 11 of its 15 seasons where it won eight or more games. He has produced winners in 17 of 21 seasons. But now he is in the stronger Mountain West and it includes TCU and other teams who recruit, sign and retain African-American players. When Air Force plays at BYU on Saturday, school officials say that the Falcons will dress 82 players, and 13 of them are African-American.
It took the whipping by TCU for DeBerry to realize his program is lacking people and players he says he needs?
There are black athletes who do not run fast. There are plenty who do. But what strikes me as most ignorant is the excuse offered by some DeBerry defenders that “speedy” African-American athletes are not interested in Air Force. That the ones who are fastest are not the brightest and cannot do the work. Nonsense. There are scholar African-American high school football players from coast to coast who happen to run fast.
DeBerry has not done a good enough job of recruiting and signing them.
For a lot of reasons, maybe now, if he gets the chance, he will.
Because when I hear an administrator with these issues swirling say this is our coach and he will be our coach as long as he produces leaders for our school and nation, as the Air Force people did Wednesday, I get the idea the coach will soon find himself shoved out of the door.
I am not buying it when the coach is coming off a 5-6 season, is heading toward a worse record this year and has not been in step in these high-profile recruiting and racially sensitive times.
DeBerry has produced a body of work that earns him the right to fix what he has broken. The right to see what he can do to bring players with more speed that he says he must have – including African-Americans – to Air Force.
I do not see it happening.
His time at Air Force is fleeting.
Staff writer Thomas George can be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
